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-there are all these people doing wind-down end-of-year posts and I am still full-tilt not ready for 2013 to stop. It's the 22nd, baby, lights back up and speeding downhill again. It being Wintervalmas is just making my job obnoxiously hard and stressful. However, I get four days off; the 24th, 25th, 31st and 1st. I get paid for this shit. Wow.
Wintervalmas errands accomplished today; baked a completely disastrous cake, banked some investment returns for tax purposes and started the EFIN registration process (which I apparently should have done like 2 months ago). I am the best xmas.
I've also been manoeuvring for a part-time job; I am going to be training n00bs for cuddleboss as of January 6th, and there is hope of a CPA firm job in Cambridge that I imagine starts late Jan/early Feb; not totally sure about this as the Useless People were meant to set me up an interview and haven't yet done so. I'll call them tomorrow and scream at them or sth.
-I keep wondering how much to write down; in any new environment, my instinct is to write shit down because I need to hang on to how weird everything is when you first see it, before you learn to skip over those gulfs of reason that you're going to be dodging around, day and night, for the rest of forever. Being paid a living wage, having somewhat humane working conditions - I need to register my shock at these things before it goes away. There's no reason behind it; Zombies, Inc is not yet breaking even, although it probably will in 2014 - someone just decided that my job was worth money, just as someone decided my previous jobs were not. (My Friend remarked over lunch a few weeks ago that in 2014 he expects Zombies, Inc to pull in about a million bucks and become a stable, reliable workplace, at which point he will completely lose interest and quit.)
The big wheels turning in my head the last few months have mostly been Thene Learns Basic Social Skills; nothing new to anyone else, I guess. Seriously while all jobs are highly specific social-skills factories, this (as of the end of September) is the first one where I've been paid to get people to talk to me rather than it being an incidental, value-added thing that sometimes happens while doing my job. Plus, I've never worked anywhere so sales-oriented before so my base reaction is 'I AM SURROUNDED BY FUCKING WIZARDS, I MUST LEARN THEIR WAYS.' The rent-saving startup ethos of everyone (except our boss, and also Wolfie and Spike because we ran out of space) being piled into one room does help build the neural net; just listening to My Friend talking is one of the highlights of my day tbh, and I feel like I get to see everything in its full dysfunctional glory. The list of things (eg. the most fruitful sales strategies) we don't tell our boss about has escalated to the point where the Cyborg was thinking of getting into an internships arrangement with his fraternity to get some unpaid, work-from-home-for-college-credit datamonkeys - so Zombies, Inc would have employees we hadn't told our boss about. This hasn't happened. Yet.
-it's the intellectual curiosity suck, as ever; proximity is enough to make you want to understand a thing, even without the added $$$$ incentive. And bonus, I get to write about this shit. Double bonus, the Cyborg mandates that our team spend the first 30 minutes of the day reading the day's industry news so we know what the hell is going on out there. (That I get paid for this makes me think of all the smarmass tax clients I've had who write off a WSJ subscription as an investment expense every year. When we were roadtripping in 2011 I picked up a lot of different newspapers in motels, and I can therefore pronounce the WSJ America's most vapid shitsheet. But seriously, I am now on the mystifying level where knowing my shit is allegedly worth company time.)
-I gave cuddleboss back the SEE textbooks that she lent to me back when she'd decided she wanted to take the CPA exam instead; she's since changed her mind because the CPA exam is a huge bitch. She said she was way happy for me having like letters after my name and a proper 9-5 job but was also a) pissed that I wasn't an unemployed bum who would be able to work for her full time, and b) jealous that I passed my shit before she did when she'd got through part 1 of the SEE last year. I seriously love her, definitely one of the 2 best bosses I've ever had. (The other was Dani K, the ex-marine & Arthurian fangirl who watched Fox News at work and dreamed of moving to Cornwall one day. So confuse.)
-I've never worked at a place swank enough to have an an office party before. It was dinner at boss's house, which makes a sort of social sense as boss is literally twice as old as his oldest employee (that would be me), and his son cooks for a living; I am just not going to speculate on what it is like having to cater for your overbearing parent's party where the guests are all younger than you (I think) and your proud hostess stepmother's barely older (I don't judge, because o for the love of god), but everything was completely delicious.
As I had never been to such an occasion before, I had never had a chance to confirm the rule that someone has to get completely wasted and show their crotch to all of their coworkers en masse; I guess I can only be grateful to have learned that this is true without having to be the person who did it. It was an unfortunate and very inebriated hallway yoga accident, and she was wearing the tiniest dress, black tights and disappointingly plain underwear. She also says she's forgotten most of the party. We have therefore silently agreed to memory hole the entire incident.
My boss also used the occasion to tell a friend of his that I wrote good, "even better than me!" he said. DUDE. YOU CANNOT WRITE. YOU CAN THINK, YOU HAVE GREAT IDEAS SOMETIMES, WHICH HAS FOOLED YOU INTO BELIEVING THAT YOU CAN WRITE, BUT YOU LITERALLY TYPE WITH TWO FINGERS AND YOU HAVE NEVER MET AN APOSTROPHE YOU DON'T WANT TO MUTILATE. IF GHOSTWRITERS DIDN'T EXIST YOU WOULD HAVE INVENTED THEM.
Wintervalmas errands accomplished today; baked a completely disastrous cake, banked some investment returns for tax purposes and started the EFIN registration process (which I apparently should have done like 2 months ago). I am the best xmas.
I've also been manoeuvring for a part-time job; I am going to be training n00bs for cuddleboss as of January 6th, and there is hope of a CPA firm job in Cambridge that I imagine starts late Jan/early Feb; not totally sure about this as the Useless People were meant to set me up an interview and haven't yet done so. I'll call them tomorrow and scream at them or sth.
-I keep wondering how much to write down; in any new environment, my instinct is to write shit down because I need to hang on to how weird everything is when you first see it, before you learn to skip over those gulfs of reason that you're going to be dodging around, day and night, for the rest of forever. Being paid a living wage, having somewhat humane working conditions - I need to register my shock at these things before it goes away. There's no reason behind it; Zombies, Inc is not yet breaking even, although it probably will in 2014 - someone just decided that my job was worth money, just as someone decided my previous jobs were not. (My Friend remarked over lunch a few weeks ago that in 2014 he expects Zombies, Inc to pull in about a million bucks and become a stable, reliable workplace, at which point he will completely lose interest and quit.)
The big wheels turning in my head the last few months have mostly been Thene Learns Basic Social Skills; nothing new to anyone else, I guess. Seriously while all jobs are highly specific social-skills factories, this (as of the end of September) is the first one where I've been paid to get people to talk to me rather than it being an incidental, value-added thing that sometimes happens while doing my job. Plus, I've never worked anywhere so sales-oriented before so my base reaction is 'I AM SURROUNDED BY FUCKING WIZARDS, I MUST LEARN THEIR WAYS.' The rent-saving startup ethos of everyone (except our boss, and also Wolfie and Spike because we ran out of space) being piled into one room does help build the neural net; just listening to My Friend talking is one of the highlights of my day tbh, and I feel like I get to see everything in its full dysfunctional glory. The list of things (eg. the most fruitful sales strategies) we don't tell our boss about has escalated to the point where the Cyborg was thinking of getting into an internships arrangement with his fraternity to get some unpaid, work-from-home-for-college-credit datamonkeys - so Zombies, Inc would have employees we hadn't told our boss about. This hasn't happened. Yet.
-it's the intellectual curiosity suck, as ever; proximity is enough to make you want to understand a thing, even without the added $$$$ incentive. And bonus, I get to write about this shit. Double bonus, the Cyborg mandates that our team spend the first 30 minutes of the day reading the day's industry news so we know what the hell is going on out there. (That I get paid for this makes me think of all the smarmass tax clients I've had who write off a WSJ subscription as an investment expense every year. When we were roadtripping in 2011 I picked up a lot of different newspapers in motels, and I can therefore pronounce the WSJ America's most vapid shitsheet. But seriously, I am now on the mystifying level where knowing my shit is allegedly worth company time.)
-I gave cuddleboss back the SEE textbooks that she lent to me back when she'd decided she wanted to take the CPA exam instead; she's since changed her mind because the CPA exam is a huge bitch. She said she was way happy for me having like letters after my name and a proper 9-5 job but was also a) pissed that I wasn't an unemployed bum who would be able to work for her full time, and b) jealous that I passed my shit before she did when she'd got through part 1 of the SEE last year. I seriously love her, definitely one of the 2 best bosses I've ever had. (The other was Dani K, the ex-marine & Arthurian fangirl who watched Fox News at work and dreamed of moving to Cornwall one day. So confuse.)
-I've never worked at a place swank enough to have an an office party before. It was dinner at boss's house, which makes a sort of social sense as boss is literally twice as old as his oldest employee (that would be me), and his son cooks for a living; I am just not going to speculate on what it is like having to cater for your overbearing parent's party where the guests are all younger than you (I think) and your proud hostess stepmother's barely older (I don't judge, because o for the love of god), but everything was completely delicious.
As I had never been to such an occasion before, I had never had a chance to confirm the rule that someone has to get completely wasted and show their crotch to all of their coworkers en masse; I guess I can only be grateful to have learned that this is true without having to be the person who did it. It was an unfortunate and very inebriated hallway yoga accident, and she was wearing the tiniest dress, black tights and disappointingly plain underwear. She also says she's forgotten most of the party. We have therefore silently agreed to memory hole the entire incident.
My boss also used the occasion to tell a friend of his that I wrote good, "even better than me!" he said. DUDE. YOU CANNOT WRITE. YOU CAN THINK, YOU HAVE GREAT IDEAS SOMETIMES, WHICH HAS FOOLED YOU INTO BELIEVING THAT YOU CAN WRITE, BUT YOU LITERALLY TYPE WITH TWO FINGERS AND YOU HAVE NEVER MET AN APOSTROPHE YOU DON'T WANT TO MUTILATE. IF GHOSTWRITERS DIDN'T EXIST YOU WOULD HAVE INVENTED THEM.
no subject
I spend an hour "horizon scanning" every day. And I've picked up application-shaping tips that way; but they've mainly come from the comments...
I think your instinct to write is right.
You need to elaborate on "disappointingly plain underwear".
no subject
I don't know that hoarding HAS to be the symptom of a deeper problem; it causes more than enough fuckup in and of itself, and at that point I cease caring. (One of the wisest men I've ever known told me that the most basic form of magic that exists is rearranging your furniture & cleaning your curtains). I suspect that with my parents, it may have been related to the fact that they were both born during WW2; seriously wonder how common it is among that generation, though they probably both fed off each other plus their other difficulties (my mother's chronic illnesses, my father's insistence on spending as little time at home as possible). I experienced it in a more lengthy and creepy fashion from my father, and when I was finally able to put a word to it (4 years after leaving home, I am so amazing) and I talked about it with my mother's best friend, she immediately agreed and said he was sitting in his lonely caves atop his pile of gold and trinkets. (My mother met her best friend due to Tolkien fandom, okay).
Mint green, bikini briefs I guess. Really not worth showing to all your coworkers.
no subject
My Dad is a genuine baby boomer (i.e. postwar) and I would characterise him as "overly thrifty", although if something breaks he has the parts and tools needed to fix it. My mum was born between VE day and VJ day, and she's in a whole different league (imagine a bedroom where there's a narrow passage to a mattress on the floor and everywhere else boxes are piled to the ceiling; ditto half the lounge, and my bedroom, and...) I think it's a mix of stupidity and a failure of empathy; she does it because she can't manage her time, because she sees worth where there is none, and because she doesn't understand how it effects people. I also learnt, fairly early on, not to take my problems to her because her advice was useless and (as with you) Dad was never around (and not all that smart either, though it's taken me longer to see that). Mum would also praise me for going to my room, being quiet, and living in my head so I now do a passable impression of an autistic person, even though I have functioning theory of mind – when I remember to engage it...
But none of us were taught to do work. My mum did virtually no housework: before cooking a meal she would wash whatever was necessary to prepare it. We occasionally got "clean clothes", although clean meant smelly because washed clothes were left in a bowl. Despite that, my kid sister emerged as willing as any woman to engage in pointless labour; not only is her house spotless, but she does massively more work than her colleagues and is constantly bitching about their lack of effort. Most other women can't meet her standards. (She is healing and has just got herself a boyfriend.)
So I don't think women are taught to work. I think women are conditioned to have higher standards. And I think this is just an extension of fashion and the general pressure on women to be attractive. Examine the apartment of a single man and a single woman and---on average---I guess the man's apartment would be a messier; but both are successfully managing their homes, it's just women keep theirs neater. And when mixed-sex couples come together, I think the woman ends up doing more of the work because she is unwilling to wait till the man feels the need to clean. (That said, when I was at university I could find samples which "disproved" these theories, and talking with young couples I see a lot of the housework being shared out evenly – even where, disappointingly, the man maintains his job.) At any rate, my current thinking is we need to counteract the pressure on women to be houseproud; women need to be what Suzanne Moore calls "sluts".
[I've just realised that, in writing this, I see myself completely detached from both genders: I'm talking about men and women in the third person without any sense of connection to either.]